


Sorrows

by BorosPaladin



Series: Nova Alabastra [11]
Category: Kingdoms of Amalur
Genre: Gen, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2015-02-19
Packaged: 2018-03-13 18:26:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3391721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BorosPaladin/pseuds/BorosPaladin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a lot that Fae and mortals don't understand about each other, but occasionally they manage to connect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sorrows

He found me sitting on a cliff in the Caeled Coast. Most of the people who knew why I was here had tried to talk to me, tried to get me not to, including her. But he just sat there and stared down into the water. We just sat there, the slightest moment flinging either of us to our death. But then, that’s why I was here. It was so strange to think, though, that a Fae might contemplate suicide, that eventually asked.

“Why are you here?”

“Why are _you_ here, mortal? I jump, I’ll merely pass into the Great Cycle; you jump, you die. No return trip.”

“That’s the point.”

“Really?” He sounded genuinely interested. “Please, tell me about it. You mortals are so fascinating.”

“There’s nothing about me that’s fascinating. I’m nobody.”

“Well, hello, Nobody. With a name like that, I suppose you should just call me Somebody.”

I smiled a little. To my surprise, he smiled back.

“So, Nobody. Since you think you’re so boring, how about I tell you a little about myself? Would you be willing to sit here while I tell you my story?”

“I guess so.”

“You see, I’m actually quite young in Fae reckoning. That’s not to say I came into existence recently, merely that I was recently reborn from death. In my last life, I was actually one of the Tuatha.”

I balked. Here I was, sitting down at the Caeled Coast, having a calm discussion with one of the greatest enemies the Dokkalfar had ever faced!

“That surprises you? Of course it does. I look nothing like it, and the Tuatha were quite the bogeymen for you mortals. I admit I’m still not pleased with your presence in these lands, but I’m also in no place to defy Fate.”

“Actually, the Faeweavers say that Fate has been gone since Gadflow was defeated. I’m surprised you hadn’t heard.”

“Really? Well, that’s interesting. I imagine it’s quite the existential crisis for you, Nobody. I mean, I doubt you’ve felt any different for the Weave being gone, but it does make you question who you are, doesn’t it?”

I nodded. This ‘Somebody’ was pretty wise for a Tuatha.

“So! You’ve agreed to hear my story, now settle yourself down and pay attention, since Fate can’t make you anymore. Before the war, when the Tuatha first started appearing as followers of Gadflow and his new god, I was an aspirant attempting to join the House of Vengeance. You probably don’t know this, mortal, but Vengeance was the bulk of voluntary recruits into the Tuatha. I was eager, too focused on joining those I wanted to be my brothers and sisters in arms to consider what alternatives I really had. I saw the Tuatha as a way to join the House quickly and without question, and I was willing to pay any price for that. It was also quite encouraging to hear the Tuatha talk about the crimes of mortals, as part of my reason for wanting to join the House of Vengeance was to join what I saw as a righteous crusade against you. Of course, the Tuatha needed membership badly at that time, so I was eagerly accepted into their ranks and fully converted into a hairless, Prismere-drugged lunatic without ever joining the House of Vengeance.

“You see, there has often been a bit of a rivalry amongst the three Great Houses of the Court of Winter: Sorrows and Vengeance don’t like being told that they’re not as good as Pride; Sorrows and Pride resent being treated as useless old relics by Vengeance; and Vengeance and Pride are often jealous of the esteemed position that Sorrows earns by its necessity to the Court of Winter. So when Vengeance was rising up with the Tuatha, the other two Houses simply stood their ground, claiming that they weren’t concerned with these upstarts. But then the upstarts began to gain on the Great Houses, overwhelming Vengeance and threatening the other two. Pride, being the self-important turncoats they’ve ever been, decided to ally themselves with the Tuatha. Now this was a mostly nominal thing, they did little more to support the Tuatha than stand out of the way and seal Alabastra off from you mortals.

“Sorrows, though, made a deal.

“Oh by the way, Nobody, what’s the single most important thing in your life?”

“What?”

“Truly. What defines you as who you are, what makes you the Nobody you have become today? What mighty fact about you has defined your entire life?”

“I would have to say my family line. I’m descended from the Ansilla line.”

“I’m sure if I were mortal I’d recognize the name. But consider your family, the Ansilla line. Recognize the reverence it is due, no matter how much you may spit and curse at your lot in life. Consider how your parents shielded you when you were young, how they did their best to teach and raise you, how they brought you into the life you now know. Imagine that you were doing something which you knew they would despise, perhaps helping to steal gold from their treasury, I don’t know what else mortals value. Consider that they knew, and they just stood aside in hope that you would recklessly hurt yourself and see for yourself that what you were doing was wrong.

“That defining history is similar to what the House of Sorrows stands for. And when the Tuatha rose to power, they struck a deal: Their king was replaced by a supposedly moderate king, who would lead the House into neither a close alliance with the Tuatha nor a rebellion against them. This was the situation in the House of Sorrows as the war upon your kind began in earnest.

“During these events, I was found to be unexceptional in most ways. I didn’t die, unlike most of my brethren, even when your famed General Tilera had us in retreat. My cunning earned me a small command, not much, but enough to be proud of. When the Balor was summoned, my unit was almost always at the front, crushing by force those mortals who had dared drive us back before. But as we neared Mel Senshir, I was quite suddenly reassigned. I was confused at first, concerned that I had not served well enough, but once my new task was explained to me, I realized that I was doing something much more important than raiding mortal camps. Instead, I was infiltrating the House of Sorrows, or rather joining in a plan to do exactly that.

“Unfortunately for me, that plan involved waiting for an opportunity as the real conspirator sowed seeds of fear amongst the House. Nearly ten years I waited, until the Balor was slain and the siege broken. Ten years had the trap lied in waiting for someone to spring it, and that someone turned out to be the Siegebreaker. With the Siegebreaker’s unwitting help, we laid waste to the House in search for the great power upon which it was founded, the Sorrows. But the plan was revealed as it neared completion, and the Siegebreaker overcame us and struck down Bisarane.

“I died. Let me tell you, mortal, it was a painful experience, and not only in the physical sense. This death was a crushing of all my hopes and dreams, an absolute end to my faith in the Tuatha and in myself. Having thrown away all that made us Winter in favor of this new crusade seeking a Winter without a Spring, and then with the Siegebreaker having torn that crusade apart, I was utterly lost.

“When I awoke, I wept for days. Eventually I emerged, but I refused the company of my fellow Fae. They weren’t welcoming, given how I had treated them during my time as a Tuatha, but I turned down what few offers they made. I had made a ruin of my past, and had given up my ability to build a future, having poured that into Gadflow’s madness.

“And then she found me. I never learned her name, but she was one of what were now called Old-Delvers, Fae who had learned the ability of Delving. It was a minor gift for her, but burdened as I was by my crimes, it was a blessing of the highest order for me. When she Delved me – understand, mortal, this is as though you betrayed your family line, actively worked to bring their end, ruined yourself in your failure, and then they somehow accept you once again. This was a rebirth to me, an entirely new life. In all my years passing through the Great Cycle, I had only felt this once before, the first time I was Delved when the Court of Winter was being founded for the first time.

“This, mortal, is the meaning of the House of Sorrows: Hope. The House of Sorrows is hope for all Winter Fae, but in these days especially for those of us who wish to be purged of Prismere’s corruption. In gratitude for my rebirth, I have pledged this life to serve as a Tender, caring for the Gallows Tree that stands as a monument to all that the House of Sorrows aspires to be. It is hope, yes, but it is not the growing hope of Summer; rather, it is the hope of purgation, that all your wrongs can be obliterated, that everything you have managed to make a mess of will one day pass away. It’s a darker hope tham most mortals are comfortable with, but there’s no denying that it is hope.

“And so, this is what I offer to you, Nobody. Even your nothingness, your worthlessness, can eventually be changed. You say you no longer have a fate; this is for mortals what the House of Sorrows is to the Unseelie, a hope that you can one day do better.”

He swung his legs up from the ledge and stood. “So, Nobody,” he said as he offered me a hand up. “Still want to jump?”

I grimaced as I took his hand and pulled myself up; I could feel my spirits lifting as I stood. “My name isn’t Nobody. I am Drewn Ansilla, and you are right. Death is not for me just yet.”

“Good! And I, Drewn Ansilla, am Myrcyr. Please do come by the Midden and see me anytime.”

“I think I shall.” And with that, he left. Of course, I was no fool; I knew that the next day would be another suicidally impossible day, but he was right that I had to get through it. No matter how difficult it would be, I had to keep going, for my family’s sake.

 

But the one thing that bothers me to this day is this. Myrcyr said he’s a Tender, caring for the Gallows Tree. They rarely leave the Midden, and I was sitting far from the Alabaster Road.

How did he know to find me there?


End file.
